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The Trouble with Toxics: What Dateline Missed and Why

Small Zombies in the Winter of Our Discontent (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

NBC’s Dateline just this week ran a well-executed two-part series on toxic chemicals that included body burden testing of one of the producers, Andrea Canning, and her three young children. Knowing what I do, it gave me chills to watch Canning intentionally try to raise her chemical levels by doing normal things like eating canned foods and heating plastic in the microwave!

The segments (here and here) include interviews with a scientist and researcher on endocrine disruptors (chemicals that mimic hormones in the body and have been linked to cancer, anxiety and attention deficit, among other health issues), as well as the required skeptic on the risks of toxics and company disclaimers.

The most interesting part of the piece, however, was when Canning, working with Environment Canada‘s Bruce Lourie and Rick Smith, proved that she could both raise and lower the levels of Bisphenol-A (BPA), pthalates and triclosan in her urine over a 24-hour period. This is critical: as I mentioned in an earlier post — Three Days to a Brand-New BPA-Free You — repeated studies, as well as Lourie’s and Smith’s excellent and engaging book, show that BPA and other chemicals can be reduced in a matter of days by being careful about exposures.

Because people tend to get immediately overwhelmed when their attention is raised about the risks from chemicals, it’s important to show that small changes can make a big difference. On the show, Canning switches from canned food to fresh, changes her makeup and personal care products, and stops microwaving in plastic, which are all good changes to make.

She also vows at the close of the series that she will change some of the items her children are exposed to — moved in part by the test results that show BPA and pthalates in all three kids and very high levels of triclosan in two of her children — her two-year-old had levels 100 times the national average!

Parents know that this is a moral question— not just an administrative one — and that if a risk can be eliminated by a simple change, they would prefer to err on the side of caution while scientists sort out the issues. No parent wants to be part a grand experiment involving their child, on their watch. Yet given the knowns and unknowns on chemicals, and the sorry state of regulation, that’s essentially what we’ve got going on.

Unfortunately, although Canning is evidently convinced — and stunned a bit by the testing results, Dateline doesn’t do a great job of unpacking the issues generally, potentially leaving consumers confused or even a bit misinformed, as I’ll get to below.

While Dateline cites the Food and Drug Administration’s reassurances on BPA, they fail to explain the FDA’s view that BPA does not get (much) into food from its packaging, not that BPA is necessarily safe to consume. And although Dateline also cites the food industry’s standard line — that BPA is a necessary in can linings to keep the food supply safe — they didn’t mention what my basic Web investigation on the lining of tomato cans turned up, which is that the food preservation BPA provides is a matter of months on a can label, as well as mere pennies per can of cost savings for industry. They also failed to point out that (some, not all) cans and jar lids labeled BPA-free may be lined instead with vinyl, a known carcinogen.

emerging evidence for adverse reproductive outcomes (infertility, cancers, malformations) from exposure to EDCs, and there is also mounting evidence for effects of these chemicals on thyroid function, brain function, obesity and metabolism, and insulin and glucose homeostasis. [p. 9]

And while I’m being picky, I’ll also complain about the fact that — having worked with TV folks before on occasion, who always like things to be (overly) simple — I know that they picked the low-hanging fruit in terms of public messages and “to do’s.” Unfortunately, in so doing, they ignored a major complicating factor for consumers that Smith and Lourie were no doubt well aware of — the substitution problem.

This all points us in a more radical direction. While most people were likely nodding along with Canner as she dutifully checked her sippy cups for the number 7, and her shampoo for “fragrance” or “parfum,” I was screaming at the screen to dump plastic sippies altogether, as well as the Triclosan-laden hand soap, diet soda and canned foods — oh, and the scores of plastic toys in her living room, the electronics and living room sofa filled with flame retardants, the non-organic, industrially farmed foods, the plastic baggies and deli wrap made of PVC, the BPA bowl in the food processor and coffee maker using re-heated plastics, the dish cleaners and laundry detergents with phosphates, the skin lotions with parabens, the take-out food boxes lined in “teflon” PFOAs…

Ok, maybe I can see why Dateline thought it would be too much for viewers. The truth is, we’re swimming in petrochemicals and other nasty substances, and it’s a long, slow, painful and damned expensive journey for consumers to try to tackle any of it. That’s why Florence Williams complained in the New York Times a little while back about how her own body burden test adventures had her eating “like a Mennonite.”

At the time, I thought Williams was being a bit too dismissive of what consumers could do to change things. Maybe it’s our own Mennonite past, back two generations, but we have managed at our house to slowly wean ourselves off almost all packaged foods and have replaced most of the plastics in the kitchen with wood or glass (admittedly at considerable expense). Consumers are more powerful than they think, and companies are springing up every day to cater to this new “greener” customer. So I think its critical that we all do what we can, as we can financially (and mentally!) afford to consider the changes we’d like to make and that we’d like to encourage in the world.

At the same time, wow — it’s a lot of changes, and pricey ones. The problem with talking about toxics is that, like tiny but threatening zombies, these chemicals are hidden everywhere in modern life, waiting to be awakened in your mind and to stagger across your living room, likely at 3 a.m., as your consciousness expands and your credit card takes a beating.

Making matters even worse, someone keenly attuned to these issues will keep feeling duped as they keep learning more, meaning that the emotional cycle of being upset and purging some risk is more-or-less a constant state of being for the anti-toxics avenger. (My latest: Did you know they are now gassing some brands of almonds with a chemical from the antifreeze family? I didn’t until last week. Ick.)

This dynamic poses a challenge for advocates as well, of course. The ubiquity of chemicals — and the banality of their place in everyday, normal products — means that people trying to raise these issues are constantly shuttling between saying we can do something concrete today to save our own skins and saying that we need the government to intervene, because only the government could control all of the risks on our behalf. Both are, of course, perfectly true, despite the obvious tension.

We want consumers to act, as they should, to drive demand for better products. But ironically, to make this action discrete, palatable and not instantly overwhelming, we are often stuck presenting only partial, even dumbed-down information — in Dateline’s case, to the point of false reassurance.

The sad truth is that you can chuck all the “parfumed” products you like, and still end up with yucky parabens and other unhealthy ingredients in your products. It’s not easy being green. At all.

7 thoughts on “The Trouble with Toxics: What Dateline Missed and Why”

Have you been able to find a good food processor? They typically have the plastic bowl, and I have one but don’t use it often, and try to take comfort in the fact that food isn’t in contact with it for very long at all. But I’d like a safer alternative, if one exists.

Laura, have you found anything about the toxicity or safety of dyes in rugs (synthetic vs natural, chrome vs alum mordants, etc)? I’m confused about if a cheerful, brightly colored 100% wool rug with a cotton backing is still going to be toxic because of the dyes. The few companies I found with using vegetable dyes and alum mordants are just too expensive for me. Would love any of your insight!

I don’t know anything about this — check out the great blog O Ecotextiles and I’ll bet you’ll find an answer there. Do consider that at least dyes don’t off-gas (I think!) and the age of your child, if any — they may not have a chance to migrate much, even if problematic.

It was such a pleasure to read someone else’s writing about #xenoestrogens. I have for years been educating the public. I agree that teaching people in simple easy to do steps is very valuable in our war against endocrine disrupting chemicals. I also discovered years ago that you need to provide people with healthy alternate choices in what products to use in their home.

I am just in the process of completing a $30,000 dollar website (slated for release in February 2014) to educate the public on how to avoid endocrine disrupting chemicals. Keeping it simple and with easy steps to encorage living xenoestrogen free.

I once was very sick with multiple hormone related issues that I now no longer am plagued with. It has become my mission in life to help others regain their health and change our world for the better.

Thank you for sharing. We can win the fight against chemical hormone disruptors one person at a time. Keep telling anyone who will listen!

I recently ran into your blog while researching non toxic things for my family and I just wanted to say hello! About two years ago my husband and I finally made the commitment to start shopping and living more sustainably. We try to shop locally as much as possible, and beyond that we shop made in USA or fair trade and do our best to keep organic and non toxic. As you also discovered, this is like a full time job. We had our first baby in September, and I spent all last summer, basically, on the computer making sure every single purchase we made for her was as ethical/sustainable as possible. I actually started a blog similar to yours when we first started, but found it was so time consuming just living this way that I didn’t have time to blog about it. This is all to say, I appreciate so much all the time and energy you have put into your blog and I think we are kindrid spirits in many ways. Your list of stuff you bought for Maya was extremely similar to one I could make for us and our daughter. 🙂

So, I’m currently having a similar freak out that you went through about toxins in our furniture and carpet. Our entire home is hardwood except for this one small room. Unfortunately, it happens to be the room where we spend 90% of our waking time. Of course. So, we are seriously considering replacing the carpet and couch and entertainment unit with non-toxic alternatives. But, I remember reading on one of your posts that recovering a sofa was likely to release more toxins than just leaving it be and I was wondering if the same was true for carpet. I am sort of imagining the installers pulling up the old carpet and foam padding and dragging it through the house, releasing so much toxic dust that it almost negates the benefit of the new. Do you have any opinions on or experience with this?

Any help/advice you have would be great. Our current debate is whether to replace with wool carpet/padding to maintain the coziness of the room or just replace with bamboo and get a wool rug. I’m worried about bugs with the wool carpet, personally… anyway. Enough rambling! Thanks for taking the time to read this.

My reply:

Hi there,

Thanks so much for writing! I will anonymize your email and post as a comment — hope you don’t mind!!

I think if you had the carpet removed from your house and then vacuumed well with a HEPA vacuum, it would help, as would opening the windows.

I can say that there are not many options for floor coverings that seem truly superior in terms of chemicals. With carpets, I would worry about VOCs off-gassing, as well as any plastics in the backing of the carpet. More on that summarized here: http://www.health.com/health/article/0,,20411598,00.html

The best company from both an environmental sustainability and health perspective seems to be Earth Weave: http://www.organicandhealthy.com/carpet.html (I’ve seen them in person, and they are lovely. They can also be bound into rugs.)

They do produce plush carpeting and rugs which would work for a nursery, though the color scheme is a bit dull. One post I read said the best prices for these were from this site, though the prices are not posted: http://compostablegoods.com/index.php?cPath=21_49

There are also eco-rugs from natural fiber companies (that use sisal, grasses and jute, for example), but none of these would be particularly comfortable for babies and young children.